Many recent events demonstrate, unequivocally, that religious fundamentalism poses a threat to gender equality here and around the world. Here are some examples: “Through more than 50 edicts, orders and restrictions, the Taliban have left no aspect of women’s lives untouched, no freedom spared. They have created a system based on the massive oppression of women that is rightly and widely considered gender apartheid,” declared UN Women Director Sima Bahous on August 15, 2023.
Nowhere in the world has there been such a widespread, systematic and comprehensive attack on the rights of women and girls as in Afghanistan. All aspects of their lives are restricted under the guise of morality and through the instrumentalization of religion. The Taliban’s discriminatory and misogynistic policies deny women’s right to equality.
On August 14, 2023, we learned that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was negotiating, as part of an agreement with ultra-Orthodox allies, concessions that could radically transform the face of a country where equal rights for women was guaranteed in the 1948 Declaration of Independence. Although Israeli laws have not yet been changed to reflect these concessions, there are fears that these changes are already underway, at the expense of women.
Israeli media have reported, in recent months, incidents deemed discriminatory: bus drivers refused to pick up young women because they were wearing crop tops or sports clothing; ultra-Orthodox men stopped a public bus and blocked the road because a woman was driving; The National Medical Emergency and Disaster Service has, for the first time, separated men from women during the academic portion of paramedic training undertaken to fulfill a requirement of Israel’s national service.
Remember that when there is segregation based on gender, to accommodate the wishes of the ultra-Orthodox, women either sit at the back, have access to less funding, or have limited career choices. Women’s rights advocates are also concerned about efforts by the Israeli government to weaken the Supreme Court, which has upheld equal rights for women in several areas.
The Iranian “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, started in September 2022 following the death of a young 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, as part of her arrest by the moral police for “wearing her clothes improperly”. veil”, helped to highlight the affronts to women’s rights perpetrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Its very constitution is based on the principle that women are second-class citizens, are legally the property of men and must comply with a multitude of prohibitions under penalty of punishment up to and including death. Economic prohibitions, prohibitions from coming and going, prohibitions preventing each of them from having their own control. According to the Iranian Criminal Code, the value of a woman is equal to half that of a man when it comes to compensation for murder, when separating a family inheritance or when it comes to the weight to be given to testimony in a legal context or in a divorce context. Additionally, the Islamic Republic of Iran imposes systemic gender segregation in schools, hospitals, transportation, sports, and others.
In 2022, in the United States, Christian fundamentalists, very influential on the American right, obtained the invalidation by the Supreme Court of the ruling Roe v. Wade, which protected the right to abortion nationwide. According to dissenting judge Stephen Breyer, this decision will have the effect of restricting the rights of women and their status as free and equal citizens.
Coming into force in 2021 in Poland, a ruling from the Constitutional Court, controlled by the conservative nationalist and Catholic party in power Law and Justice (PiS), prohibits all abortion except in cases of danger to the life or health of the pregnant woman. or if the pregnancy results from rape. In practice, however, it seems impossible to obtain an abortion, even a legal one. Poland thus becomes one of the most restrictive European countries in terms of the right to abortion.
Here too
Canada is not left out regarding the dangers of religious fundamentalism. CBC News revealed, in June 2023, the existence of a strategic document from the Liberty Coalition Canada according to which it wants to recruit 10,000 new Christian political candidates in order to be able to align Canadian laws with “biblical principles”. However, the right to abortion, which has a consensus among the Canadian population, is one of its targets. After the success achieved by religious lobbies in the United States, vigilance is required here too, in Canada, with regard to respect for women’s right to equality.
As Simone de Beauvoir said so well: “Never forget that it will only take a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question. These rights are never acquired. You will have to remain vigilant throughout your life. »